Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

[sodamo]

Great thread. Built our house in 2006.

David Sent from my iPad using TractorByNet

[mjncad]

Mom sold he current house and needs to be out of there by May 1st (she's currently renting it from the new owners, which is kind of strange).

You're a good son. Renting the house back from the new owners isn't as strange as you may think. If the new owners are in no hurry to take physical possession of the property, they can rent it out and take depreciation and other write-offs on their income taxes.

I couldn't build a 4'x4' dog house in 90 days. lol

Neither can I.

Glad to find a thread about building a house with superior walls for the foundation, as that is our current plan as well. Seems like a good product and system. So I'll be watching this with great interest! When do you plan to start the actual foundation excavation?

Check out this thread. The OP is using Superior Walls for his under construction New Jersey home. http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/p...me-begins.html

[Verticaltrx]

Great question with a great answer! So when the well driller came out to check out the site, I told him approximately where I wanted to well. Proper setback from the road, distance from the house, etc.

Now this guy has been drilling wells for 20+ years and is pretty much a 2 man operation. Anyway, we're walking through the woods, and he just grabs a branch off some random sapling, and snaps it into a Y resembling shape. He then peels back the bark back into "handles" at the tips of the Y that he will be holding, in such a way that the bark forms a spring suspension of sorts to the rest of the stick, if you will.

He then walks very deliberately in straight lines towards the location I suggested and past them. Making passes about 60 degrees apart, so about 6 "marches" total. To my amazement, I could see the stick that he held very loosely in his hands in the bark "suspensions" clearly turn down towards the ground with varying intensity as he made his approaches. And no, his hands did not at all move with the stick. So after a few minutes, he determined the best spot as well as a 2nd and 3rd less favorite spot. They were all within 10 feet of each other. We went with his #1 spot.

Being a big time skeptic of everything that cannot be scientifically proved, I jokingly asked him if dowsing really worked. He said that, over the last 20 years, having done about 800 wells, he had only drilled 2 or 3 dry ones. Sure, a few only flowed 3-4 gallons and he had to go down past 400ft, but still , that is a pretty impressive record, and this well was right up there. I mean you could hear the water flowing!

Interestingly, the neighbor's lot is now on it's 2nd well. The first one dried up back in 2002 (I think that was the year) during the big drought we had. He had a new well dug, and they went to 400 ft before he got 3 gallons. Someone else drilled that well.

Believe it or not.... I wish I had video taped it. It was so obvious how the stick would point down as he walked in his straight lines, and not his hands....

Dowsing/witching/devining, whatever you want to call it could be explained scientifically, but I have yet to read anything about it. Basically is works on the magnetism of the earth and things that disrupt it (water underground).

While I can't say I could locate a good spot for a well, there are numerous things that this practice is good for. I use it all the time to locate underground pipes and wires. Instead of a y-shaped branch I use two pieces of 12ga copper wire bent into an L-shape. The long leg of the L is 16" or so, the short leg about 4". Hold the 'rods' by the short leg with arms outstretched and about 16" apart. Grip the wires loosely so they can turn. Go to an area where you want to find an underground pipe/wire and start walking perpendicular to where you think it is so eventually you will cross it. When you walk over the pipe the two rods will swing inward and point in-line with the pipe. By going from either direction you can locate a pipe within a few inches. Works almost 100% of the time, I've even let people that were true disbelievers try it and they had similar results. This is the same principle as dowsing for water but in that situation you have to be much more precise and in-tune with what is going on. For a well they are detecting the underground aquifers, find a place where two of them cross and you'll have a good strong well.

[pclausen]

So all the rain has put a damper on things...

Was way to wet to work today and yesterday was pretty messy as well. Tried to get the fire going in the morning, but despite 3 excavator buckets worth if diesel. It did not want to get hot enough to sustain the fire. It looked pretty cool right when the bucket of diesel was dumped in the hole.



But after about 15 minutes, it was like this:



Probably could have gotten it going with some more dedication, but then the logging truck showed up again and hauled out another load of full trees and came back and picked up almost all of the cuts in a single go!



The man was out with his scales yesterday, so we were very careful to keep the loads close to 80k. I believe they were 81.5 and 82k, compared to the 91k the first day.

It might be dry enough to try to light the fire again tomorrow, but after the 2+ inches we had last night, I'm not so sure.

[Jim Shooz]

**It might be dry enough to try to light the fire again tomorrow, but after the 2+ inches we had last night, I'm not so sure**

Get into it with your leaf blower from underneath.

[dave1949]

Leaf blower would help, no doubt. I've not had a lot of luck with diesel fuel getting green wood going. If you can get a small hot fire going that builds a bed of coals, then you can put green wood on that coal bed, and it will burn. Otherwise, once the twigs and needles go up quick, you are left with a pile with too much air space in it and very little heat. That's my theory.

[pclausen]

That sounds about right. I've had that experience many times myself. Will have to try the leaf blower trick for sure! 4 tires were thrown in the bottom of the hole, and I think one of them burned, but it was still not enough to get it going. It was very windy today, so it might have dried out enough.

I also hauled a small load of poplar to a hard wood mill this morning. Never been there before. Way different experience than the huge softwood mill. Guy came picked up the pieces from my trailer with a large loader where the lower teeth were basically flat fork lift teeth. He then rolled all the logs out on the ground, and the owner came over with measuring stick, and called out strange sounding numbers to his daughter who was taking notes. I guess it had to do with board feet per log. He was measuring the skinny ends. It was only half a trailer load, pretty much just one medium poplar tree. Still got almost $200 for it. Heck, I probably got some poplar trees on my lot that are worth over $500 each then. He takes all hardwoods he said. I'm sure oak would bring in a lot more than poplar. That mill is 14 miles away, so just a little further than the pine mill.

[hawkeye08]

Keep taking and posting the pictures, love to watch, wish I was close enough to help.. 90 days is doable if the subs are lined up.

[pclausen]

Got the fire going real good this morning. Most of the main junk pile is was gone by 10am. Here's a morning shot. Nice hot burning fire, not much smoke at all. Sorry for the crappy picture.



Here's one from about one mile away a little later as I went to town. The only "clouds" are smoke from the fire.



I have been over there for about 3 hours this evening after dark dragging brush over to where the Case operator can drop it on the fire. He showed back up at 9:30 tonight and is loading just about everything that is left onto the fire. I'm heading back over there in a bit to check it out. I'll bring my real camera and take some better pictures than those crappy cell phone pics!

Tomorrow the plan is for me to skid out the rest of the pines that have been cut where the drain field is going, cut the tops as I'm dragging them by the fire, and throw them on the fire with the excavator.

Monday we start excavating for the basement!

[pclausen]

Got about 50 stumps in the pit. They burn slow and hot. Don't put on much of a show...